#pseudoephedrine is the only thing that has helped which is fucked up

[laurelnose]

ouuogh sleep deprivation migraine

#i mean it’s the fucking sinus infection migraine still i’ve done 37 days of antibiotics and the Goo is still in there #pseudoephedrine is the only thing that has helped which is fucked up #but i made it worse by not sleeping #worth it.

[super-rainbows]

tnhbrevcwqxe

Rainbow: it’s okay. try and calm down.

Ethan: I guess. I know I was saying this yesterday (but the whole reason I’m making this post is to say it, anyway), but 1. what is the point of coming off codeine if they won’t let me do DBT? Also, they need to stop telling me that I’m making my own decisions as if saying that will somehow make it true. If I could never have control over anything before, it’s hypocritical to pretend I do now. Especially when they’re the ones who decide whether I can do DBT or not, regardless of what I say or do. At any second they can just be like “no, never mind”. Technically I can do that too, but that doesn’t disadvantage them; the only possibilities are them disadvantaging me, or me disadvantaging myself. That isn’t equal. And if I did decide to disadvantage myself for some reason, they could just refuse to help me at all in response. As in, they could just be like “oh, you don’t want to [whatever]? well then you can’t ever come here again, bye”. It’s stupid and unfair to pretend they aren’t the ones with power over me when they are.

Rainbow: yeah, I see what you mean. sorry if I/we play into that by always saying you can make your own decisions.

Ethan: It’s different when you say it, because you aren’t secretly saying “you can “make a decision” but I’ll ruin your life/refuse to help you/whatever if you don’t pick the decision I want you to”. All you can do is disapprove. You don’t have the power to take me off the medication I’m on, prevent me from ever accessing any mental health service again, etc. (In theory I guess you could sort of try to do those things, but for one thing you wouldn’t, and for another thing the power you have is less permanent etc) But really, why would they be like “you can make your own decision but it has to be the one we want or else” and/or “no matter what “decision” you make we’re going to prevent you from accessing some kind of therapy, but you’re the one “making the decision” so it’s your fault”?

Rainbow: *hugs* are you gonna keep coming off codeine, though?

Ethan: Like I (sort of) said, I don’t have any fucking choice. Every single person I know is still going to pressure me to come off it no matter what.

Rainbow: well, we’ll support you if you want, just so someone won’t be pressuring you as much. in our case it really is just because we love you.

Ethan: That’s fine. You both get a pass to harass/pressure/criticise me, because at least for you I know it’s at least partially because you genuinely care about me or whatever, as opposed to that you just don’t like me doing anything you personally disapprove of.

Rainbow: lol. I’d correct you, but you seem pretty pissed off, lol. xD I’m sure under different circumstances you’d know that a similar thing applies to other people. your mom can get fucked, her opinion doesn’t matter, don’t bother trying to consider her. more like ______, _________, ___, ___, etc. they care about you. maybe they potentially also have some personal bias against drug addicts and are like “ew you get high to cope?” but I’m reasonably sure that most if not all of the reason they want you off codeine is because they love you and care about you.

Ethan: You’re right, but I don’t feel like properly acknowledging it right now.

Rainbow: lol yeah fair enough.

Ethan: Anyway, the point is, the cluain mhuire people were basically like “if you come off codeine you can do dbt”, but then, now that I’m nearly off it, suddenly decided to change and be like “actually never mind, you don’t get to do dbt. but keep coming off codeine anyway even though you now have no reason to and nothing to even try to replace it with”. Like, was this their plan all along? To lie to me and trick me into coming off codeine by making a fake promise to actually try to help me? Or is it some kind of test to see if I’m “””committed””” enough to continue doing a benefitless thing I don’t even want to do, for no reason at all? I am gonna continue just so that I can see what it’s like without it (and also since if I do go to America, it’d be better to be off it than either trying to bring some with me and/or going through withdrawals while I’m there), but I’ll probably just take either it or something else up again in September/October because I’ll need some kind of coping strategy. Like seriously, it was unfair enough that they were like “you can’t be given any new coping skills until after you completely drop your current effective one”, though at least that had some kind of justification, but now they’re just like, “you must completely drop your only effective coping skill, and you don’t get anything to replace it with”. What do they expect me to do? I’m sure they also want me to function and pretend to be a regular human being, and not to self harm or get high on anything else, so ??? It’s basically just like saying “just stop being mentally ill. bye”. ?????

Rainbow: sorry if this is like... bad or whatever, but either way, congratulations on getting down to 3 a day. 

Ethan: It’s literally just because 1. I don’t really have to do anything, and 2. I’m supplementing it with caffeine and pseudoephedrine, and/or whatever else is convenient. 

Rainbow: I know, but still. 10/10 you. or, I guess, 8/10? to account for the supplementing? lol

Ethan: Also, what problem do I even have?

Rainbow: autism, bpd, and trauma, and they’re inter-related.

Ethan: ?

Rainbow: the autism is permanent obviously, and affects the other two. I’ll split the trauma into sexual and emotional. the emotional one clearly affects you all the time; the effects of the sexual ones fluctuate but at least some are also always observable. in both cases you (and we) have kinda adjusted to a lot of the effects/symptoms/whatever and consider them “normal”. you generally have at least some bpd traits affecting you at all times, especially if you consider kinda minor/subtle ones. rn the most obvious bpd things affecting you are the emptiness thing and the lack of emotional permanence (which is why you’re being like “why don’t I feel anything?? I have never felt anything in my life!!! what am I???” etc and thinking that because you haven’t been having major/noticeable symptoms in the past like 2 weeks, that you suddenly don’t have bpd or trauma anymore)

Ethan: Well, either way it’s inconvenient that whatever problems I may or may not have won’t just stay still and stay the same so that I can know what they are and “deal with them” or make them go away. and it doesn’t count if they go away without me making them go away, because if they disappear suddenly for no reason then that’s the same as them never having existed or been real in the first place.

Rainbow: that’s the lack of emotional permanence thing, see? lol. you still have bpd, don’t worry. :P anyway, as a convenient example: if the ps4 decided to work properly the next time you tried it, it would still very much be the case that it’s refused to work for the past month or whatever.

Ethan: That’s like saying, “if all the problems disappear then you’ll still have attempted suicide 6 times”. That is, that’s not the point, and is irrelevant to what I’m saying. If the ps4 started working again, that would mean that it doesn’t have anything wrong with it, and the power supply doesn’t need to be replaced, and there is no problem. And if there isn’t any inherent problem, then clearly there never was, and it not working was just some coincidence.

Rainbow: I see what you mean. I’m sorry (sympathy) that your mom ruined all the good words/phrases, lol. I’m trying to think of some combination that’ll convey the same thing as what I want to say but hasn’t been ruined by her saying it passive-aggressively or with a secret other meaning, but yeah, idk. should we come up with a symbol or phrase that means something like “I’m not secretly mad at you/I’m saying this genuinely/I’m not being passive-aggressive”? then I can tack it onto what I want to say and it won’t be bad/upsetting anymore?

Ethan: *shrugs* * might work for that, since we already use it to disambiguate. Or possibly ~ since we sort of used that to mean “I love you” etc? And it means “approximately” so that works too.

Rainbow: hmm. idk.

Jamie: ~ is a bigger and more noticeable symbol? And also people already use ~ as punctuation to indicate they’re saying things in a kinda gentle, floaty way? So I think ~ is good unless you wanna use * either. Or we could use both, lol. :P

Ethan: ~ is good.

Rainbow: yeah, same. 10/10

Jamie: Thank you. :P

Rainbow: so yeah ~there doesn’t seem to be much point trying to argue with you rn~

Ethan: *shrugs* Oh, also, we could use * for “interpret rationally” and ~ for “interpret lovingly”.

Rainbow: lol. I don’t think there’s much point distinguishing because for what I said, there isn’t a huge difference between either interpretation. idk about other statements, but yeah. anyway yeah ~I’m sorry if I upset you or anything

Jamie: Do we always have to disambiguate when something isn’t intended passive-aggressively?

Rainbow: nah, I’d say only if Ethan (or one of us) would interpret it that way otherwise.

Jamie: ^

Rainbow: lol

Jamie: Even though thumbs-up symbols are okay now, you kinda can’t do emojis on a computer keyboard. Well, I guess if I was willing to just manually copy-paste them or something.

Ethan: The computer doesn’t really display emojis, so there’d be kinda no point, especially if you tried to copy-paste the right one from a list.

Jamie: lol

Ethan: You could just type a kanji or something for the same effect, except I think those do usually display. :P When should I go to bed/sleep?

Rainbow: ideally soon, but I mean you took caffeine and sudo like 4 hours ago? possibly less? I don’t really see you falling asleep anytime soon, lol. you need to be up at like 9:30, right?

Ethan: Yeah.

Rainbow: lol, good luck. also, it’s okay (about exams). you’re gonna be fine. <3

Ethan: Thank you. :P 

Rainbow: it’s worth a shot trying to call the hse place tomorrow, and if that doesn’t work then you can try at 8 (or whenever) on Tuesday and then if that doesn’t work then you can try at 9ish on Tuesday. 

Ethan: I definitely wanted to say something else, but I can’t remember what. Oh, this isn’t relevant at all, but I’m kinda surprised that even though I’ve lowered the codeine dose so drastically, food anxiety still hasn’t come back.

Rainbow: I can see why that makes you feel “fake” or whatever, but I mean since it usually does tend to come back eventually, I would say just enjoy your ability to eat without having panic attacks for now, lol. and you can always have some of my anxiety, lol. oh also, regardless of anxiety or lack of, you still don’t have the healthiest behaviours, mindset etc. 

Ethan: But why would anyone care about that?

Rainbow: *shrugs* I wanna say that normal people don’t/wouldn’t do things like take fiber pills instead of eating, take stimulants just for the laxative and/or metabolism-raising effects, drink straight vinegar because it supposedly helps weight loss, etc, but tbh I have no idea. maybe they do? I know that doesn’t help at all, lol, sorry. I mean those don’t seem like “healthy” behaviours, but “normal” people do do a lot of weird shit, so idk.

Rainbow: are you okay? lol, at least you’re distressed now, so you’re aware that you do in fact experience distress. xD

Ethan: I think it’s more like resentment than distress.

Rainbow: yeah. I meant negative emotions in general, I guess.

Ethan: I wish whatever problem I supposedly have would just stay still and consistent so I could know what I was and whether it was improving or not. Instead of just randomly changing and fluctuating all the time. Like how am I meant to solve whatever “problem” I have if one week it’s anxiety and another week it’s dpdr and another week it’s anger? I’m sure it all falls under “trauma and/or bpd” but that isn’t helpful since both of those things are basically like saying “every possible symptom”. Like, yes, it is “a symptom”, but that doesn’t convey any information whatsoever, and is completely useless when it’s a different symptom every week to month anyway.

Rainbow: yeah, that makes sense.

Ethan: Do you think bpd was a misdiagnosis?

Rainbow: no, I don’t think so. that’s the short/immediate answer, anyway. you always tend to assume that not experiencing a given thing right now is the same as not having experienced it ever and not tending to in general, so you’re basically being like “I’m not having any major problems at this exact second, therefore I don’t have any mental illnesses and never did” which isn’t how it works.

Ethan: *shrugs*

Rainbow: if you want one thing to focus on that’s constant, your fucked up thought patterns are seemingly always there. I know they fluctuate too, but you always (on whatever level) believe things like “being mad at someone = hating them and wishing death on them”, “not experiencing something right now = it never having existed in the first place”, etc.

Ethan: If that somehow went away then nothing would be constant.

Rainbow: lol. ideally I think maybe if the things like that went away then some other problems would too? but yeah, things like dissociation probably wouldn’t be directly affected by thought processes. do you wanna go to bed?

Ethan: I guess.

Rainbow: you can just try/pretend to sleep a bit at some point, lol.

Ethan: How is anyone ever helped by talk therapy?

Rainbow: idk

Ethan: Like, it doesn’t do anything? You just talk and then that’s it. How is that supposed to affect anything? If it was in addition to some actual/practical thing, maybe, but otherwise I don’t see how it would do anything unless it was like “now that I’ve acknowledged the problem, it’s gone”, which is what I was always like with crushes when I was younger (that is, as soon as I said it to anyone it would disappear for some reason).

Rainbow: lol

Ethan: Although even with the “say the problem and then it’ll disappear” thing, that would rely on someone actually believing you, and nobody believes anything I say. Like the therapist last week apparently believed me by accident but then remembered he wasn’t supposed to.

Rainbow: ~lol ~(at how you’re interpreting that)

Ethan: I would ask how you would interpret it, but all you’d do is say I’m wrong.

Rainbow: that’s not what I’d be trying to say. well, okay, I guess it is, but not like that. I’m not really sure what he was going for either, tbh. like, either it is abusive (which, imo, it is), or it’s not, not “it is abusive but pretend it isn’t” or whatever.

Ethan: He said it was but then took that back, implying that it isn’t, then basically said that it isn’t but he’s willing to pretend it is. And I guess it’s good that he’s willing to pretend that I have any right to be affected by things, but it isn’t very good pretending if he also tells me outright that he doesn’t believe that at all.

Jamie: @.Rainbow: @.what you just thought: Seriously, fuck off with that. Anyway, I’m not super sure what he was going for either, but I sort of get the impression that 1. he said “that sounds abusive” without thinking (okay, we all knew that already), and 2. for some reason he thinks that if he explicitly categorises your mum’s actions as abusive, then you’ll be inclined to act on that in some way? That’s the impression I get, I guess. 

Ethan: I guess he doesn’t necessarily not think that, but that’s a completely ridiculous thing to think since I’ve made it obvious that I avoid conflict at all costs. And that doesn’t prevent it from also being the case that he said it by accident or like as an exaggeration or something, while actually believing the opposite.

Rainbow: why say “that sounds abusive” if what you’re thinking is “that sounds like a completely reasonable way to treat a young child”? point I’m making is that I don’t think that is what he was thinking.

Ethan: It might’ve been more like “that isn’t ideal but not actually bad”, as in, pretty much the same as what I assume already.

Rainbow: *sighs dramatically* you literally told him that it would help if he was validating instead of saying/implying that you have no right to feel whatever way you do, so  w h y  the fuck did he decide to say that?

Ethan: Well, just ‘cause I said that would help doesn’t mean he’s actually inclined to do it.

Rainbow: I wish I could just talk directly to him or something, idk.

Ethan: It’s probably unreasonable for me to just want to be validated and told that it makes sense to feel whatever way I do. That is, I don’t just want to demand something ridiculous like that.

Rainbow: ...

Ethan: You’re acting like it’s reasonable, but I really don’t think it is. It’s not like you’ve never thought/felt/believed any unreasonable thing. :P

Rainbow: true but I’m usually right in relation to you and it’s usually obvious (even to me) when I’m not. also go to bed soon.

Ethan: Okay.

#imaginary friends